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The Sandbox: Episode 8.5, Repopulation Interview.

The Repopulation is a Science Fiction Massive Multiplayer Online Role Player Game by Above and Beyond Technologies. You begin your adventure as a second generation clone colonist on the planet of Rhyldan, with mankind on the verge of extinction, and in the midst of a civil war.

My doubt is this game has quests because every game has ‘em it’s like a willing poison assumption, taken for granted, and so they didn’t mention them because they aren’t aware that they alone cruelly obliterate sandboxmanship in an instant.

I’ve read enuff. Then you sort of lied, mister, the themepark element is entirely in the hand-holding quests you wrote in god knows how much time you could save to contrive a good PvP political system, and ofc the economical one. And you sort of lied when you said players are free to do what they want. Because they’re not, they WILL do quests the way you want them to.

I don’t think sandbox fans like to be told what to do, where, and when. This game is entirely themepark, from my point of view. Sorry.

I’d like a game to implement the EQ1 style of questing in again where you had to interact and speak with the npcs through chat commands, as well as remove icons from over their head (back when u had to research quests). Wishful thinking, but to me it seems like the perfect middle ground between sandbox and themepark gameplay.

There are quests, and many types. That’s enough to be able to say it’s not sandbox at all, at least in MY book. Eve does have missions, but nobody does them and eve’s not a real sandbox either. Mortal Online doesn’t, Ultima didn’t, i’m not sure about Galaxies.

If you’re saying it’s a sandbox game mostly because of skill based, then… please take a step back.

Star Wars Galaxies had them. Darkfall has them. Ultima Online only had a few, but it did have them. I just don’t get your basis that a sandbox shouldn’t have quests. That really makes no sense.

What makes a sandbox is player created situations. Things like player created cities, sieges, player driven economies, and players not being forced in to a pre-determined path that is the same as other players.

@Erasmus
I agree with you, that is what makes a sandbox to me as well. I know a lot of people feel like the only real mmo sandbox was UO. I think the term “sandbox” means a lot of things to different people, just like mmo. I wouldn’t call guildwars or DDO an mmo but I know a lot of people do, and I wont argue because that’s what it is to them. So for me and my definition of sandbox I just want a game where my clan can claim an area of the world and defend it. I prefer to have open pvp with full loot and no tab target, but I’ll take two out of three.

“players not being forced in to a pre-determined path that is the same as other players”.

This phrase of yours, scratching the not, is the very definition of a quest.

So no, a MMo with quests cannot be sandbox, especially if it also claims to want to tell a story.

A sandbox being about player-driven economies and politics, exploration and stories clashes with the concept a scripted quest, which claims the right to tell YOU a story, to tell YOU what to explore, to tell YOU about political situations, and to tell YOU don’t need economy, because a quest, providing money and equipment, eliminates the need of crafting and selling.

I think that depends on a lot of factors. Quests did exist in games before WoW, look at EQ1. Darkfall has quests that offer cash and items, Darkfall is nothing like WoW. In real life people go to work and do things for other people for money and knowledge, real life is not like WoW. The only games i think that are a result of the WoW system are all of its clones Runes of Magic, Order and Chaos, even Age of Conan to some extent.

Sorry, but I completely disagree with you. Quests are adventures you can do along the way. Sandbox games allow users to choose the way they want to play. However, having quests is something that many users (though apparently not you) wish to do.

Do you not agree that Star Wars Galaxies is a sandbox? It is one of the most successful sandbox titles of all time. But people did generated missions over and over. More than that there were static missions from npcs in town, and there were even theme parks in SWG. They even called them theme parks. You had the rebel, imperial, hutt and other theme parks which were long series of quests. Some players did them, some players didn’t. But by your definition them having those quests made the game not theme park. I’m pretty sure most other people would disagree with you. Guess that just makes us naive, even though it was years before WoW was even released.

Defining a Sandbox game is like defining what a Hacker is to many different communities. Either way, I guess we saved you the time of following us as it seems you are not interested in our style of gameplay. To each his own.

It’s a huge problem when people label and dismiss games before they are even released. We haven’t seen a lot of successes in the Sandbox arena and I don’t think there is anything wrong with a hybrid or someone thinking outside the norm. I can only think of one mmo released in the past ten years with no quests and that would be Mortal Online. I wouldn’t get to hung up on the term “sandbox” its a word who’s meaning is only defined by who’s using it. Prove them wrong Josh, pump out a kick ass game. Call it a sandbox or whatever you want, just make it awesome and we will all play.

All: plz don’t take it personally or label me as troll, it’s just lively debating.

Erasmus: Lemme guess, the “story-driven quests” in SWG were added with the newgameexperience.

Generated “missions” are “more” acceptable. They don’t claim to tell you an epic all-encompassing story which is a paradox in a virtual world, they don’t “follow” you in your progress and hand hold you in and out of it. Even though they invade equipment collecting and money(efficiently killing economy), they don’t dictate the sequence of maps and zones you should go to. That’s what i hate the most and just CANNOT be compatible with a sandbox persistant world, because they “tell you how to train”. I don’t think anyone can deny it unless he’s lost his mind to WoW’s orwellian influence.

a “quest” is an individualistic experience, the quintessence of selfishness and “personal achievement” and its existence is in contrast with every aspect of a massively popp.ed world. It can only get you in touch with few other equally selfish and anti-social people who use you as you use them. It’s certainly the bane of an online global community. As an EVE’s player once told me in the chat “don’t do missions, they will suck your heart dry”

Players wish to do quests because they’re afraid of having to “understand” how a virtual “cosmos” works as a whole, doing “little personal” achievements is the easy way.

Erasmus: if SWG had over-arching long stories, and they were in places called “theme parks”, then that was the part of the game that was “theme park” and not “sandbox”, isn’t that logical? SWG was then a sandbox game to which they injected theme park elements, prolly later in development, with the NGE, and with WoW, no?

(why isn’t there an edit?)
i mean if such a blatantly themepark-oriented aspect, because those places were even CALLED theme-parks, as you said, and that’s how the term was probably invented!(and thanks for the historical information) is added to an otherwise sandbox game, that first aspect doesn’t magically turn into sandbox because of its “hosting” ambient, don’t you think?

@Hyperion: I’m not going to waste time continually comign in here and arguing with you over this. But Star Wars Galaxies had theme parks at launch way before the NGE. As has already been stated by other people, pretty much every game other than Mortal Online since launch has had quests. If you think that quest != sandbox then Mortal Online is the only true sandbox. Your entitled to your opinion, but I’m not sure how many people would agree with you.

i don’t think that quests!= sandbox, whatever this maths-freak formula means(is everyone on the internet a damn engineer?) but they almost always take your freedom away. It’s a fact. If you do quests, you don’t need to trade, to gain wealth, to manufacture items, to be in a clan, to explore on your own and generally to understand how the dynamic general systems work. I repeat, it’s a fact.

There IS a way to not make quests this invasive, which is by making them coherent with those systems, but even then, they will always weaken the realism of a total simulation.

In addition to those Escort Quests are insiginificant, in the same way you dismissed Eve’s quests as being something that noone did. Did the mere existance of them obliterate the sandboxmanship of those games?

In addition to that UO also had NPCs who would direct you towards random content. They would tell you where there were camps of mobs or things going on. While they didn’t tell you to go kill the orcs, they did tell you where to find them if you wanted to.

Generated quests, generated public quests, allow a player to participate in them if they like. Even static quests, they are there if the players wants to do them, and they can be ignored if a player doesn’t want to. It seems your stuck on the whole wow quest leveling system to the point that it is clouding your judgement and seem to believe that quests are bad for games. Me personally, I feel that the worlds where all you can do is run around and kill things is bad for games. But it’s just an opinion.

Lets be honest here there is no such thing as a true sandbox. If anything the closest thing too it would be 2nd life which in my opinion really isn’t even a game. I think a more fitting title to all of these games would be Sandbox Influenced games. On a side note i have absolutely no problem with people calling their games Sandbox games as long as they do have some good sandbox elements. As an artist and a creator it is their decision to make their game how they see fit. There’s no reason to bash a game or its developers because it doesn’t fit ones personal definition of what a “sandbox” is, because really its all just opinion.

Where can I find a list of all the games you have reviewed as well as the games you all are playing currently?

30 January 2015

Salohcin Dragon

Well EvE has a good system for carebears (High sec) & hardcore PVPers (Null sec). The prob. with that game is it is a MMO version of a space sim mixed with MS office. LiF does sound awesome, I forgot about that game until I saw a comment on Ihatemmorpgs. As for DF; UW it sounds good, freely placeable towns would be cool, but oh well. I want the wolf not to look like s/he steped out of a UFO though.

1 October 2014

Trashman

Hey guys. Life is Feudal: Your Own is about to release on steam Sep 19. They just put out a sweet promo trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMzMLo0hQ_c It will be like the full MMO except you will be able to host your own servers up to 64 players and the map will be smaller. Full MMO should be out next year.

11 September 2014

Antonio

guys, have you talked about project:gorgon? its a very cool indie mmorpg